


Just the Right Amount of Awkward

by karyatid



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-30 16:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8539990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karyatid/pseuds/karyatid
Summary: Rey leans into the touch without thinking, doesn't even know at first that it's the warmth of his hand she's seeking, only that it feels nice.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



She only calls Luke Master once, in those first days. His expression doesn't change but there's a wave of discomfort radiating from him before he thinks to temper it. "You don't have to," he says. "I mean, you can call me Luke." He clears his throat, looking unsure of himself. "If you want to."

"Alright," Rey says, and then adds stiffly, "Luke"

He smiles at her then, quick but genuine, it lingers in his eyes, changing him somehow. He seems lighter, more of the old friend who'd been so happy to see Chewie and R2. Rey's always been wary of smiling at people, knowing some take it for a sign of weakness or submission. She smiles at him now, though, but soon catches herself. Luke doesn't seem to mind.

\--

"Sorry, sorry," Luke says as Rey drops the wooden staff she's practising with to rub at her shoulder. Still wound up from sparring, part of her wants nothing more than to get a blow in at him now that his guard is down. Sometimes the Jedi way of fighting is very unsatisfying, she thinks. 

"A little more like this, maybe," he says, reaching out to help her adjust her stance. He's sweating from their exercise, like she is, close enough now that she can tell. His metal hand on her wrist is cool where he grips her elbow, but his other hand on her shoulder is warm, touching her right where her sleeve ends, his calloused fingertips catching on her skin. "You won't leave your other side open in the same way."

Rey leans into the touch without thinking, doesn't even know at first that it's the warmth of his hand she's seeking, only that it feels nice. Then their eyes meet and she draws back suddenly, feeling silly and then worried he might think she doesn't like his touch. ('I won't search your thoughts,' he'd promised her the first day. 'Not ever,' and now she thinks that's all well and good, but it would save her trouble when it comes to talking about difficult things.)

"Ok?" Luke asks, resuming his fighting stance.

Rey raises her staff and tries to hold her shoulder like he showed her. "I'll get you this time," she says, a little un-Jedi-like perhaps, but Luke just laughs.

\--

There's not a lot left of the ancient Jedi temple, at least not that Luke's managed to find so far. 

"I don't know if there was an attack, or if they abandoned it," he tells her as he's showing her around, pointing out faded paintings on the crumbling walls. "The stuff I've found was in underground rooms or hidden spaces in the walls, but it's not easy to tell if it's important things they needed to hide, or leftover junk they didn't bother to take with them."

It's been his work here during these years, he explains, sorting ancient holobooks and holocrons, some so old he had to adapt the reader to see the contents There's even flimsies, thin like the leaves on the kuvara trees in the little garden, and so fragile they have to be kept in boxes. 

Looking at the corner of the house set aside for work, Rey can sense how lonely he's been and for so long. Missing the family he left behind, thinking he could only hurt them, as well as loneliness in all this; the last Jedi looking wistfully at the once-grand temple intent on keeping its secrets from him.

It's not a bad way to pass the evenings, she finds. They sort through stuff and tinker with old holotech prone to glitching, discuss how to order pieces of uncovered retellings of Jedi history that always seem to cut off at the wrong moment, or on closer reading prove to be just another version of a fragment they've already found, or once, memorably, a recipe ("Well, if it's a way to make fish stew more interesting, my work has not been in vain," Luke says).

A lot of the holobooks are on the subject of the Jedi rules, and Rey quickly notices that Luke is less comfortable discussing them with her compared to other subjects. She doesn't ask, but he brings it up himself one evening.

"They changed over time, I think," he says. "But for most of the Order's existence, they forbade attachments, feared them, even. It was thought to bring Force users closer to the dark side."

Rey thinks of lines scratched into a wall, the friend who came back for her, the General wishing for the Force to be with her, and her heart sinks. Maybe she's failed in her apprenticeship before she could really get started. 

"But," Luke says, stacking and re-stacking the stuff they sorted through yesterday. "For nearly all sentient species, attachment, in some way, is a part of life. I thought," he runs his hand over his face, like he's trying to wash something away. "I still think the danger lies in trying to deny your feelings. It's hard, to set yourself apart from those you love when you need to, but it can be done, without rejecting them."

He looks sad and tired, staring at his metal hand, but clearly seeing something else. Suddenly Rey knows touching him would bring comfort, but she doesn't know how to give it. They clap each other on the back during sparring now, or grasp hands to help the other up after tripping them in a fight. But she's never touched him like this, just sitting calmly in the evening and she doesn't want to get it wrong. 

Then Luke smiles at her, and the moment passes. But when they get ready for bed, and Luke's crouched down to rake ashes over the embers in the fireplace, Rey passes him and puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her, smiling, and she thinks that maybe she didn't get it wrong. 

\--

She'd thought the colder season was over, but one morning there's frost on the ground again. "The early spring months are unreliable," Luke explains to her. "It'll be a while before the weather stays warm." 

It gets to her for some reason, this return of the cold. A reminder of time passing, that she's been here a good while now. She sits in front of the fire in the evening, hunched under her blanket. 

Luke sets down a tray with two mugs of tea before sitting down beside her, close, but leaving a little space between them. 

Her stupid tears makes the fire blur. "I was always waiting," she says, "and now I know, they'll never come, will they?" Maz Kanata had told her her belonging was ahead, but what if she had it wrong. "And if they do, I'm not there, I didn't wait long enough."

Luke's quiet and Rey thinks he'll admonish her for her attachment. In hindsight, her dreams seem so small and hopeless, she's ashamed of clinging to them for so long

But he doesn't say anything, just shifts closer to her, close enough that their sides touch, and then hesitantly puts his arm around her shoulder.

She doesn't cry, not really, and his kindness still makes her uneasy sometimes (little voice inside her still insisting she shouldn't trust so easily). But she's tired, and leaning against him like this, in front of the fire, feels so nice, she can't make herself move. 

\--

Rey can’t remember sleeping so close to anyone before. But the house is small and in the colder season the fire is just barely enough to warm it at night. Every evening,they shift the rickety table out of the way, and place their bedrolls side by side. At first, she thought it would be hard to go to sleep, but there’s usually rain against the roof, a strange and calming sound

Tonight, she dreams of walking through a different house, much larger with a high, domed ceiling and coloured stones covering the floor in pretty patterns. It’s unfamiliar to her, but in her dream she knows it well. Nameless terror is chasing her through rooms and hallways. Then she’s kneeling on the tiled floor, reaching for a small child, arms still chubby, but something’s not right, the child is too still and when Rey meets her eyes they’re full of pain and fear. She reaches out through the Force to touch the child’s mind, but it’s weak, weakening and when she sees the child’s eyes turn blank and empty there is nothing for the Force to meet. 

It takes her a while to realise she’s not dreaming any longer, with only embers glowing in the fireplace the room is nearly dark. Then she hears harsh breathing and turns to see Luke sitting up next to her, blankets thrown aside. A nightmare, then. And not her own. 

He gives no sign of noticing her, though he must have felt her fear as she felt his. She wants to find something to say that would comfort him, but her mind will only turn to the dream, what it felt like to hold the dying child. Then he wipes his eyes on the back of his hand and stares into the fire. 

“Sorry,” he says without looking at her. “Just a dream.” Rey feels a little like she’s stealing something by seeing him like this, and curls up to try and sleep some more. Luke lies down again after a little while, on his back. Rey knows more than she sees that he doesn’t sleep Halfway to sleep herself, it feels easy to reach for his hand. In the quiet room she hears his breath hitch, and then a slow exhale as he curls his fingers around hers. 

When she wakes the next morning Luke’s up already. They eat breakfast in silence and Rey looks across the table at his hands, then down at her own as if there might be changes from his touch.

\--

“I’m not sure it looks right,” Luke says from behind her. 

Rey reaches back with her non-injured hand to feel where her hair is gathered at the back of her head. She’s been able to dress and undress herself with a sprained wrist, thankfully, but putting her hair up has proved too difficult. 

“It’s fine,” she says, feeling the hair-ties carefully - they seem to be in place. He’s resting his hand, the flesh one, on her shoulder, the warmth seeping through her thin clothes. 

“There’s,” he says, and cuts himself off to reach for a tendril of hair that has escaped and tuck it behind her ear. His touch is so light she can barely feel it, fingertips sweeping over her temple. She turns her head into the touch without thinking and he hesitates a moment before running his knuckles down her cheek. 

\--

"It's cold," Rey yells towards the the shore.

"Really?" he yells back. "Wait, no, that's exactly what I told you."

She splashes him for that but he just raises his hand and sweeps the drops of water to the side, effortlessly.

"Show-off," Rey grumbles, and Luke smiles at her before shouting "Not too far out!"

She tries to splash water at him using the Force this time, but mostly manages to hit herself in the face, coughing and snorting as she feels his amusement.

"You need to get up now," he says, and she doesn't want to but she also can't really feel her toes anymore.

It's colder out of the water than in it, she finds, the undershirt she'd worn to bathe in clinging to her skin. 

Luke holds her robe out for her when she climbs up from the shallow pool by the shore, and as she draws it around her he rubs her arms briskly. 

"You'll teach me to swim, won't you?" she asks as Luke's herding her into the house, muttering about chest colds. "Later, when the water's warmer."

"I think you'd be better off asking my sister about that," he says, smiling, then turning his back on her to get the fire started. "And you really should get out of those wet clothes."

\--

"I'm alright," he says. "Really, I'm," he tightens his grip on the makeshift bandage and she doesn't have to look to know it's started bleeding again.

"You're really not." Rey says, her hands shaking as she tries to open the bacta patch from the ship's measly Med kit. "I told you to run, why didn't you run?" She can't pretend it's fury and not tears making her voice shake. She knows why, because he was covering her. I should have been faster, she thinks.

She's outright sobbing now, when they're in the clear, hyperspace jump done with (and she doesn't want to remember how shaky that had gone) with Luke sitting propped up against the wall and talking and not slumped in a heap on the floor, pale and unmoving, slow dark trickle of blood at his temple.

He draws her into a hug with his uninjured arm and holds her while she cries, her face buried in his shoulder.

She's all but cried herself out when she notices Luke's trembling and she sits up to see his face tight with pain, still trying for a reassuring smile, but it's slipping into a grimace. There's only one bunk in the ship's cramped living area, but she tries to make him comfortable, covering him with a scratchy blanket she finds, and both their robes. He manages to drink a little while Rey checks the bandage on his arm.

There's nothing more she can do for him before they can get to a proper Med bay, and she's suddenly weak from the adrenaline rush and curls up beside him, resting her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest where she can feel his heartbeat, slow and steady.

She wakes to find they've shifted in their sleep and now lie facing each other, holding hands. They've been close many times by now, sharing living space, first on the island, and then on missions such as this, in tiny ships, but this feels more intimate for some reason. Luke's already awake, running his thumb over the back of her hand.

"I thought were going to die," she says, her voice hoarse with sleep and crying. "You were covering me, and you nearly died. Next time, I won't let you."

But Luke just smiles and shakes his head. "I ask of you to let me make that choice. I'm not saying I wouldn't like to stick around for awhile, I really do. But if I have to, it's my life for yours, not the other way around."

Rey suddenly can't look at him, staring instead at their hands, his metal one cradling her own. 

"Alright?" Luke asks, and she shakes her head, not trusting her voice. He starts to say something but Rey isn't in the mood to hear how important it is that he be allowed to die saving her, so she kisses him instead. 

He kisses her back at first and it feels so good, even with exhaustion weighing her down like duracrete. But then he draws back, all too soon.

"Rey," he says. "I'm sorry, we shouldn't."

"I love you," she says, and it's true, she knows it now, knows from the searing panic that went through her as she felt him disappear when the blaster shot hit him. 

"I know", Luke says, and sighs heavily. "And I love you, too. But it's not right, you've been so lonely all these years."

Rey scoffs, because she might have grown up in a harsh place, and often isolated, but it's not her that's spent the last decade as a hermit. She uses their link to let him see a little of her past, show him she's some innocent bantha cub with a crush. 

"Alright, fine," Luke says, and he's blushing a little. "Point taken. But still." 

He's still tired, she sees, shadows like bruises under his eyes, and probably concussed, and she knows better than to press the point right now. She kisses him on the forehead, instead, feels him exhale before sleep claims him again.

\--

The Resistance doesn't need much of an excuse for celebration, she's found.

There's a party on when she gets back from Myrkr, climbing out of her the old A-wing she'd flown for her scouting mission to be greeted by music and smiling people milling about the hangar. She gets only a disjointed account of the cause, but something went well, they won the day, made it back, so why not throw a party?

She finds Luke in an alcove a little to the side, looking, not lonely exactly, but pensive, in the midst of all the exuberance, in a way that sets him apart. He smiles when he ses her, and she can feel his relief that she's returned unharmed.

They sit side by side, leaning their heads together to speak of her mission. Rey feels like she's trembling inside and it's a while before she realises it's not just excitement from the flight, it's seeing Luke again that makes her feel like this, being so close to him.

"Old ship like that, you're lucky the power converters didn't." Luke says and that's when Rey leans in and kisses him. The angle's a little off, and she catches the corner of his mouth. 

Luke draws back, looking down before he lifts his hand to stroke her hair slowly. It's a kind gesture, but not that of a lover, and Rey feels small and silly. He'll reject her, of course he will.

He cups her cheek, tilting her face a little towards his own. "Rey," he says, just her name. She swallows around the lump in her throat, before turning her head to kiss the palm of his hand. His breath hitches and he slides his hand to her neck, holding her in place as he kisses her

There's nothing careful or chaste about it this time. They kiss like they can't get enough, until a sudden outburst of laughter makes them spring apart, looking around like guilty children caught sneaking out, but no-one's seen them. 

Her quarters are small and her bed narrow, and there's a lot of shifting and getting stuck while taking their clothes off before she can touch him as she wants to, feel his hands on her skin. Luke is happy to let her take the lead, push him him down on the bed to straddle him. They fumble before getting it right, laughing at themselves, trading smiles and kisses as she takes him inside her. 

Luke turns out to be a cuddler, which she thinks she should have guessed, throwing his arm around her and burying his face in her neck. Rey's still too restless with happiness to go to sleep so she looks up at the ceiling while tracing patterns on his arm. 

She's almost asleep when she hears it.

"Luke," she says, and then when he doesn't answer at once. "Are you awake?"

"Mm," he says, cutting himself off with a yawn. "Sure."

"It's raining," Rey says. "Listen." It's a faint, continuous smattering against the roof, stronger when the wind throws its weight behind it. "I like rain," she says by way of explaining. 

Luke tightens his arms around her and kisses her shoulder (and doesn't point out that she's recently spent nearly a year on a very rainy planet). "Me too," he says. 

She won't think of the future, she promises herself before sleep pulls her under. She can have this, now, a shared love of rain and his smile against her skin.

 

End


End file.
